From the Middle to the Later Stone Age
To put history in Africa since 70,000 bce into context, an understanding of the preceding long stage of hominin history is essential. That era, beginning before 200,000 years ago, has two archaeological names.
Outside of Africa the common term for this age is the Middle Palaeolithic. In Africa it is called the Middle Stone Age. In Eurasia the Upper Palaeolithic succeeded the Middle Palaeolithic; in most of Africa the Later Stone Age followed or replaced the Middle Stone Age. These differing terms originally came into use because of uncertainties about the dating and the comparability of African archaeological cultures to the better-studied cultures outside the continent. But now that we have much better dating and know a great deal more about the African developments of these two ages, it turns out that there are good historical reasons for keeping these distinctive names. Archaic Homo sapiens, belonging to our own or to sister lines of descent, made the Middle Stone Age cultures; Middle Palaeolithic cultures were the work of hominins of more distant genetic relationship to us.Prepared-core tool-making techniques, which first came into use in the later part of the preceding Lower Palaeolithic age, became the characteristic feature of Middle Palaeolithic and Middle Stone tool technologies. In this technology the toolmaker flaked off the edges all around a stone to form a prepared core with faceted platforms from which flakes could be struck off with a hammer stone. Because of the prior trimming and shaping of the core, the pieces that the knapper struck off in this manner would possess sharpened edges and, if not already of a fully utilitarian shape, could be retouched into blades, scrapers, or projectile points.
In the Later Stone Age of Africa and the Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia, these industries were replaced by industries dominated by blade and smallflake tools, punched or struck from cores with plain platforms.
Deliberately produced small blades and small backed blades and points became common. Ground stone tools also became a usual feature, and new social and cultural behaviors and practices appear in the archaeological record. The Upper Palaeolithic variant of the Later Stone Age originated, it appears, in northeastern Africa. Its characteristic tools were small blades like those of other Later Stone Age industries, but with greater frequencies of burins and, initially, lacking in the types of microliths found relatively early in the Later Stone Age industries farther south in eastern Africa.[419]Ancient stone tool finds occur almost everywhere, but findings of skeletal remains from earlier ages tend to be relatively few and widely scattered in time and place. One consistent relation holds, however, and provides a key interpretive principle: Wherever we do have skeletal materials in Later Stone Age contexts in Africa and in “Upper Palaeolithic” contexts (as these sites are termed outside the continent), they are those of fully modern humans like us. In contrast, wherever there exist skeletal materials associated with the Middle Palaeolithic or the Middle Stone Age, they are always the remains of more archaic hominins: Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East; Denisovans in Central Asia; and archaic humans in Africa. It is possible that we may discover some day that this correlation does not always hold. But the evidence as it stands is without exception: archaic humans with the Middle Stone Age, and other archaic hominin species with the Middle Palaeolithic, versus fully modern humans like ourselves with the Later Stone Age and in its Upper Palaeolithic versions.
Outside of Africa the toolkit of the Later Stone Age/Upper Palaeolithic, with its accompanying suite of new cultural features, appears abruptly in the archaeological record, earliest in Sinai and the Negev from around 48,000 bce.[420] From there, the fully human bearers of the new kind of culture spread outward, reaching southeastern Europe by perhaps 45,000 bce and moving farther west into parts of central and western Europe between 45,000 and 43,000 bce.
A second, contemporary line of spread of our fully human ancestors out of Africa seems likely to have emanated more directly from the Horn of Africa, passing eastward through tropical far southern Asia and reaching parts of island South Asia and Australia by around 44,000-42,000 bce.[421] In Central and East Asia, interestingly, fully modern human populations with Upper Palaeolithic toolkits arrived later, from around 30,000 bce onward, following more inland routes across Asia from the Middle East.[422]But in Africa this story of cultural transformation began earlier. The fully modern ancestors of us all evolved in Africa. The blade-based toolkits of those fully modern ancestors and their associated features - such as bone tools and art - originated in Africa. The new cultural synthesis did not appear abruptly around 48,000 bce, as it did outside the continent, but in stages between about 68,000 and 48,000 bce. The fully modern human cultural package that took shape in that period built on and diverged out of an earlier Middle Stone Age heritage. It incorporated tool-making advances and features of personal expression and ornamentation, such as perforated shells, that originated in the Middle Stone Age in Africa, but were unknown previously outside the continent.[423]
Although the archaic human populations in most parts of Africa before around 70,000 bce, in many aspects of their anatomies, appear almost modern, their cultural behaviors and their responses, for example to climatic challenge, reveal that they did not yet possess the full range of modern human capacities. The history of the first archaic humans to spread out of Africa into the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, a bit before 100,000 years ago, is a case in point.11 The archaeology of this population was Middle Stone Age; in the Arabian peninsula it has specific links to the contemporary Nubian complex of northeastern Africa.[424] [425] The archaic humans advanced, it appears, into lands previously occupied solely by Neanderthals. But with the return of a colder climate sometime before 70,000 bce, the archaic humans in the Levant disappeared from the record, and Neanderthals, better adapted by physique to cold climates, once again prevailed.
The contrast with the capacities displayed by our fully modern human ancestors from 48,000 bce onward could hardly be sharper. Fully modern humans proved able to adapt to almost every terrestrial clime, and their expansions led to the eventual extinction of Neanderthals and other homi- nins. Clearly the archaic humans of 100,000 years ago did not yet have the capacities for adaptation to all manner of climates and the capabilities for out- competing all other hominins. By 48,000 bce, however, our common, fully human ancestors did possess those capacities.